Sports Arena Meet Is Given a Shot in the Arm

The shotput competition returns for the first time since 1977 to the Sunkist Invitational tonight. Sports Arena officials would just as soon have an earthquake on the program.

They were pleased to inform promoter Al Franken earlier this month that they sold the shotput ring 10 years ago. But he hasn’t remained in this business for 30 years without being enterprising. He borrowed one from the Forum. Then Sports Arena officials told him Thursday that they found the one they thought they had sold. So now Franken has two shotput rings.

Why isn’t the shotput popular with arena managers? Well, Franken said, he recalls when one of Brian Oldfield’s throws landed on the track and splintered it. On another occasion, Oldfield put the shot over the high hurdlers’ heads during their competition. And then there was the time that another shotputter hit a display of oranges, sending them rolling onto the track and forcing the runners to hurdle them.

This time, Franken said, the competition will be held when no running events are scheduled.

His feature attraction is Randy Barnes, the Olympic silver medalist who had an adventure outside the shotput ring last weekend. Pulling into a motel driveway in Little Rock, Ark., at 2:30 last Saturday morning, after a meet in Jonesboro, Ark., Barnes was challenged to a fight by a man coming out of the lounge. When it looked as if the 287-pound Barnes might take him up on it, the man’s friend, to even the odds, pulled a rifle out of his pickup truck.

Barnes walked calmly into the lobby and reported the incident to a policeman. The two men were arrested. The rifle, by the way, wasn’t loaded.

The next day, in a meet at Dallas, Barnes had the second-longest throw ever by an American indoors, 71 feet 10 inches.

Other 1988 Olympic medalists competing tonight are Roger Kingdom, Tonie Campbell and Andre Phillips in the high hurdles, Kenya’s Julius Kariuki in the 3,000 meters, Evelyn Ashford and Jackie Joyner-Kersee in the 60-yard dash, Diane Dixon, Valerie Brisco and Lillie Leatherwood in the 440, Antonio McKay in the 500-yard dash and Hollis Conway in the high jump.